March 7, 2002

    Shri Ram Naik, Minister for Petroleum & Natural Gas informed the Lok Sabha in a written reply today that the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flow in respect of New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP) blocks in the year 2000-01 was Rs. 116 crore (US $ 23.67 million). The Minister clarified that no target was fixed for FDI for petroleum exploration during the Ninth Plan. However, the estimated amount of foreign investment during the Ninth Plan for petroleum exploration in the exploration blocks as well as the discovered fields is about Rs. 905 crore (US$ 184.68 million).

    Shri Naik further informed the House that the Production Sharing Contracts (PSCs) signed for 47 NELP blocks commit the contractors to carry out the specified minimum exploration work programme in terms of the respective PSCs. The estimated expenditure in the three exploration phases for all the PSCs under the first two rounds of NELP is about Rs. 9,443 crore (US$ 1,927.20 million).

    As a result of the exploration efforts, assessment of reserves in the three discoveries made in deep water block KG-DWN-98/2 is around 40 Million Metric Tonnes of oil and oil equivalent gas. No hydrocarbon discoveries have yet been made in other NELP blocks.